Here at Ibis we only sponsor one rider. His name is Brian Lopes. He’s been racing for over 30 years. He’s a new inductee in both the Mountain Bike and the BMX Halls of Fame. He’s also a many time World, World Cup and National Champion (more titles than you have toes and fingers).

What’s a guy like Brian doing riding for Ibis? Winning.

And getting a lot of frequent flier miles on his bike.

Actually, when we think about why Brian is riding for Ibis, it’s best just to ask Brian, and to see him in action. If a picture is worth a thousand words, what’s a video worth? More.

So without further drivel, here’s a video about Brian and Ibis. We have it in a nice big high resolution file, 1280 x 720 format (137 megs), and a bunch of smaller ones if you’re bandwidth challenged.

There’s even one saved for your iPod or iPhone if you so desire. We like, and we think you’ll like.

For all you carbon fiber doubters out there, check out Brian running the A-Line in Whistler. Ex Volvo Cannondale Teammate Cedric Gracia filmed this from his helmet. Un, can you say incredible? Click on the full screen mode down there by the volume. Prepare to be humbled.

The Lopes Link adds a bit of lateral stiffness and a lot of torsional stiffness to the rear of either the Mojo or Mojo SL. It only adds 18g over the two separate upper links it replaces. And yes, it retrofits to either Mojo or Mojo SL.

Somehow, we’re lucky enough to have a number of extremely talented Ibis owners who sometimes do artistic pursuits using their bikes as a subject. James Russell is one of them. Out of the blue he sent us this incredibly gorgeous video he produced of the install of a Lopes Link. Using video and stills with a pimpy fresh Canon 5D MKII Digital SLR, he created this “movie”.

Here’s how James put it:

“The Lopes Link Film is a mix of still pictures, chopped up video (like stop motion but a series of short moving clips instead of stills), and sped up video….
I had a couple goals in mind when I made this film, besides the obvious need of spending some quality time with my bike in the middle of winter… I wanted convey how beautiful the Mojo is, show how easy it is to work on, and make it somewhat entertaining while keeping the film as short as possible. I was also excited to use a narrow depth of field to bring the viewers attention right where I wanted it.”

Thank you James, amazing work of art. Hopefully we’ll get him to do more fun stuff for us in the future. We can put you in touch if you like, he said he’d be interested in doing more.
Lights, Camera, ACTION:

Installing a Lopes Link on an Ibis Mojo from Shuksan Photography on Vimeo.

Here are a few pictures of Brian riding a Mojo to victory in the 2008 edition of the Leapin’ Lizard Downhill.

Click on image to download a big ol juicy high resolution file.

Want to learn a bit more about Brian?

We got this interview of Brian from our German distributor. It’s in German but we’re providing you a translation just in case you can’t understand German.

And now we have an interview in the Italian Magazine Tutto Mountain Bike for you. Happy reading. Translating the text with Babelfish is particularly fun!